Tag: girlfriend

I haven’t had a girlfriend since 2009. That equates to six years of being single and six years of Holidays and Valentines that have been spent either drunk, alone, or with other friends who also share the same relationship status as me. I have to say, as much as I’ve appreciated saving a little extra money by not having to buy someone a gift around these times, those 8 to 9 days a year are some of the loneliest and depressing nights I have to endure and one of the major reasons why I don’t look forward to the holiday season which in a few short weeks will be upon us in full swing.

In the past few months I have come to the realization that I may be flawed, but I know I’m a good person and I know I would make a good boyfriend. The problem is finding that girl who can compliment me and at the same time who doesn’t take away too much focus from my work and my writing. I like the idea of love. Ok, I love the idea of love, but I also know just saying that out loud doesn’t create an opportunity for love to come around. So what does?

I’m picky. I prefer a certain type of girl and I prefer a certain look to that certain type. It’s never been easy for me to find someone to love. It’s not like anything else in life that I desire and I could just go out and get. I don’t even know where to start.

I tried the online dating sites and what I have ascertained from them is that computer dating takes the fun and soul out of the idea of dating. There may be a connection, but that connection fades when I’m not online. I already have the odds stacked against me because I live in Los Angeles and there are about 1000 better looking guys than me out here.

Ok maybe that’s too harsh…maybe there are less than 1000 better looking guys, but the point is my personality isn’t going to shine through via a two dimensional screen with pictures of myself and some witty words that girls rarely seem to even care to read. I’ll admit it. I look at the pictures and then I decide if I want to read her profile, if she even took the time to make one. I know that finding love on the internet has been done before, and done before by me, but I got to be honest, there is something unromantic about swiping left or hitting the “fave” button and paying $45.00 for three months to get rejected and flaked on by some girl in some town who thinks there is someone better coming around the corner.

Maybe love will come around if I had the perfect online profile? Probably not.

Timing is the one factor that I can’t control. Perhaps the girl I really enjoy talking to and would like to start dating, just started dating someone SHE really enjoys talking to and has now put on her horse blinders and can see me only as a guy to put in her bullpen. If you don’t know what I mean by that reference, then I suggest you watch a baseball game.

If you still don’t get it, you probably haven’t been single in a long time, so I suggest you go back to your husband or boyfriend or girlfriend and figure out where you two are going to go on date night this week.

Regardless, “I wish I had met you a few weeks earlier” has been said to me a couple times. “I’m not looking for anything serious right now” has also been said to me. So in essence, I could have found the girl I wanted back in June, the last time I got laid, and it could have been the perfect time for me, but NOT the perfect time for her.

So, what do I do then? Oh right, I stop seeing her completely and I go on a four month span of depression, not dating, and feeling like nothing is worth my time, and then I end up writing about her in a blog titled “The Flight Attendant.”

I started thinking maybe love will come around, but she never gave me the chance. Maybe love will come around if the timing is right? Well that just sucks. The timing is never right for love, is it?

The other day I was hanging out with my best friend who recently started dating someone and is now in a full blown relationship. I mentioned to her that I would like to have a girlfriend and the first seven words out of her mouth were “I didn’t know you wanted a girlfriend.” Sure I do. I’ve always wanted someone to love, but I want the right girlfriend, or the right someone to love. Do I need to declare that fact and make it known to the world by putting out a status update on Facebook stating that I am now accepting applications for the role of “Girlfriend.”

GIRLFRIEND: (27-35 Caucasian/Latin/Ethnically Ambiguous) 5’3’’-5’7’’ dark hair, light eyes, big features, not too much drama, but preferably a hot mess that doesn’t really have it all together, but strives to want to get it all together at some point and between the two of us maybe we can figure out a way to compliment each other’s messiness.

I’ll admit it, I’m a hot mess right now. I probably will be one for the remainder of my life, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to try and hide the fact that I don’t have it all together in a town full of women and men who are in the same position as me. Enough of my life is in sync now that I feel like I have something to give to that special someone who hopefully feels the same way about me. I don’t mind if it happens really fast, but I don’t want it to take over my life and deter me from my goals. I want her to be cool, and quirky, but not Kristen Wiig quirky, more like sexy quirky as in Angelina Jolie in the movie “Hackers.”

I want her to be crazy enough to get on a flight to Vegas with me on a Monday, but down to Earth enough to know that we have to be back by Wednesday cause I have work. I want her to be so many things, but part of the thrill of being in a new relationship (as I remember it) is finding out what makes the other person tick, so I still want an element of surprise to go along with these other desires.

I want her to be able to deal with what goes on inside my brain, and be attracted to me on the inside as well as on the outside. How do I manifest all these things? How do I draw love to me in a way that once it’s here it won’t make me step back and go “Whoa, I’m not ready for this” because that’s the opposite of what I am putting out into the world, and I’m NOT going to be one those people who gets what they want, then changes their mind about what they want and how it came about.

Truth is, I do want love in my life and I do want there to be someone special for me to have adventures with but how do I know if it’s the right time and the right place for the right girl to come into my life? When I say that I’m a true believer in love because it’s the most powerful emotion on the planet, I mean that. It scares me, but deep down inside I know….

I met the Artist in the Spring of 1997 when I was 21, and she was 16. Her name was Melissa, and her and boyfriend at the time used to come into my work at TLA Video in Marlton and rent indie films and discuss music and pop culture. I took an immediate liking to her and I think her boyfriend took an immediate liking to me, and invited me with them to go see the Violent Femmes concert somewhere at a small club in north Jersey.

Now, I loved the Violent Femmes, but I also had a an attraction to Melissa that I knew from the start was taboo. First of all, she had a boyfriend, second of all, she was really young, extremely beautiful and had these big stunning blue eyes, big lips, and maybe it was some spell she put over me but I was immediately attracted to her for some cosmic reason. She kind of resembled Sally from “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” minus the stitching and the fact that Sally was a puppet. In fact, her nickname in high school was “Nightmare” for this reason specifically. I knew that there was an odd attraction to her, and that maybe her boyfriend didn’t see it, so I decided to go to the show with her, her boyfriend, and a few other high school kids. I mean, I was either the cool older guy, or the lame weird guy for hanging out with high school kids who couldn’t vote or legally order an alcoholic beverage yet.

I remember the club had a cage around the bar that you could only access if you were over 21. So there I was, inside the cage not drinking anything alcoholic because I didn’t start drinking for another 5 years, looking out at the Violent Femmes singing one of my favorite tunes, “Add it Up.” I looked over at Melissa and smiled, and she looked back at me and laughed because I must have looked like fool being on the other side of the fence, literally. Melissa’s boyfriend had a station wagon, and at the end of the show we all piled into it and started driving back to South Jersey. Somehow, I ended up sitting in the way back of the car in the extra seat that faced the opposite direction of the driver with Melissa sitting next to me.

As it got dark, it took all of my will power not to touch this gorgeous girl sitting practically on top of me in the way way back seat of a station wagon as her boyfriend drove us back to Marlton. Thing is though, I did kind of touch her, and she did kind of touch me. No kissing, just grabbing of things and intense eye contact, but believe me, it was enough for me to realize I was doing something I shouldn’t have been doing and that even though I may not have know it then, this event would eventually come back to haunt me 3 and a half years later when I would find out exactly what was meant by the phrase “you get what you deserve.”

For the next few weeks, I hung out a little more with Melissa and the gang, but eventually that all stopped when I guess the guilt got to her and she told her boyfriend about what had happened in the back of his car that night. He was pretty mad, and rightfully so. I mean I hooked up with his girlfriend 8 feet away from where he was. He hated me, and I deserved to be hated, and that was pretty much the last time I saw her for awhile.

It was mid August of 1998, and I was working at T.G.I. Friday’s as a server. One night the hostess came up to me and told me there were two girls at the front who wanted to see me. Here I am thinking what girls would come to see me at Friday’s? I wasn’t dating anyone, and my mom and sister definitely wouldn’t just pop in out of nowhere. As I made my way down the stairs to the first floor of the restaurant, I saw Melissa and her friend staring straight at me. What the hell was she doing here? I started to wonder if this was a set-up and was her boyfriend was going to pop out of the phone booth and hit me across the head with a lead pipe because of what happened last year? Also, I was not prepared for such a rendezvous as I was wearing my goofy Friday’s uniform which at the time was a red and white striped shirt, suspenders, and a stupid hat that COULD NOT be a baseball hat as those hats were a violation of the uniform code.

“Hi. What are you doing here?” I asked Melissa.

“I wanted to see you.” She replied.

“I broke up with Brandon…well, I’m going to break up with him.”

What the fuck? Is she for real? Is she setting up her next boyfriend before breaking up with her current one? I guess she planned this out pretty well. I mean, I appreciate that she is coming here to tell me this, but what does that mean for me?

Truth is, I still thought about her a lot. I know it had been almost two years since that night at the Violent Femmes show, but I had run into her a couple times at shows, & the AMC movie theater. Sadly, we never talked. God forbid Brandon saw us talking, he’d probably freak the fuck out.

“Ok.” I said. “Well, let me know when you do break up with him. In the meantime here’s my pager number.” (PAGERS!!!)

I gave Melissa my beeper number, and with that I went back to work, confused and slightly interested. I think a day went by and I was at a house party when she beeped me and I knew it was her because we all had codes back then that we would leave on each other’s beepers. Mine was 11, and Melissa’s was 108 which had something to do with a song, or a band, or the album title for a band whose name escapes me now. Anyway, I called her back, she told me she broke up with Brandon, she was single now, apparently had an agenda, and this is how I started to date Melissa for the next year or so.

Melissa and I lived in the same neighborhood in Marlton called Kings Grant. It was really convenient when I drove home at 3 in the morning from her place and only had to travel a half mile. We spent every single day with each other for the first few months, and like any couple who got together when we were young, my social status and hanging out with my guy friends took a backseat to hanging out with Melissa. She was Italian, gorgeous, and she had a really close relationship with her Mom who liked me from the start and who would allow me to stay over at her place until the wee hours of the morning.

Melissa was an artist and she had this amazing quality to be able to immerse herself in the process of creating something out of nothing. I respected that, and it kind of made me want to do something artistic myself. At the time, my friends and I were running an underground fanzine called Jr. Skeptic which reported the ongoings of the punk rock scene in South Jersey. We would interview bands that came to Philly or Jersey to play shows, write articles about life, review some really good and some really terrible music, and we were slightly known in the town as being the older kids who knew what was cool, even though the whole idea behind punk rock was to avoid the mainstream vision of what was actually popular and cool. Basically, we ended up being cool though no fault of our own.

Melissa and I never fought with each other. Almost every night after working at Fridays, I would make my way over to her house and her and her mom and I would smoke cigarettes, eat food, and talk shit on people. Those two loved to gossip, and to be honest, so did I. Her mom used to take us out to dinner at the Medport diner after her shift and she would always pay for me to eat. She even helped me get a job working with her at her textile plant in Berlin organizing documents and filing away invoices. It was totally boring work, but I appreciated it, even though I eventually quit working there and started at another restaurant.

I was definitely in love with Melissa. She was the first girl I truly fell for that didn’t hinge upon the fact that I realized I loved her after I had lost her, or when it was too late. She introduced me to a way of thinking and a credo that I still believe in today even though at the time I might have scoffed at the notion she presented that “Everything happens for a reason.” She checked her horoscope daily and did my astrological chart for me and I was astonished at how accurate it was. I spent Christmas and Thanksgiving with her and her family in Philly, I was friends with her Dad whom none of her ex boyfriends could make a claim to because he didn’t like them and he was a menacing six foot three Italian ex bodyguard for Mike Tyson with a distrustful attitude and an impending look on his face that made you never want to hurt his daughter for fear of getting your legs broken.

Things were sailing along quite smoothly for the two of us. I had dated her for over four months straight which at the time was the longest relationship I had ever been in. I normally wasn’t the relationship type, but Melissa changed all of that and turned me into a long haired, beard wearing softy who cuddled with his girlfriend on the couch and held her hand everywhere we went. She loved me, hated the fact that I smoked pot, and I guess at some level I knew this but chose to ignore it from time to time and perhaps that ignorance would eventually piss her off, but it wasn’t THAT big of a deal, was it?

Yep, we were happy and in a great relationship, but when it came to our sex life, the truth is it was pretty much non-existent. That’s not true, it existed, but on some what of an adolescent level. Why? Because only one of us had had actual sex at this point in our lives, and it wasn’t her. Melissa was a virgin and I knew this from the start. I had dated virgins before, but I was 23 going on 24 at the time and I had had sex with a handful or two of girls before I dated her and I really enjoyed sex.

Don’t get me wrong, Melissa was a great kisser and she gave killer hand jobs…. probably because of all the practice she got over the last 5 years or so while she was jerking guys off instead of having sex with them. What about getting some head you might ask? Well, thing is, she wasn’t really big on blow jobs either. In fact, I can count on one hand how many times she blew me over the course of our relationship. Come to think of it, I can count on one finger how many times she blew me, and even then it was only an attempt to blow me and not a full on BJ where the end result was an orgasmic experience on my end. Did this bother me? Not really, but it was definitely a hot topic so to speak in our relationship for a good solid 9 months.

Look, I’ll be totally honest here. I did at one point tell Melissa that my intention was to eventually consummate our relationship and if that was never going to happen, I needed to know so I could figure out if I wanted to continue being with her without the ability to have sex. A guy can only receive so many hand jobs in a years time without eventually wanting to know what it’s like to actually be inside of his girlfriend, instead of just being gripped like the handlebars on a bicycle on a regular basis. It’s not like I gave her an ultimatum and said, “fuck me or else I’ll break up with you,” but I guarantee you that’s probably how she remembers it.

There were a few other things about us that made me realize that perhaps we were a mis-matched couple and starting to grow apart. At a New Year’s Eve party in 1998, I got stoned fifteen minutes before midnight and came back to the party high as a kite because I didn’t really drink alcohol at the time. Melissa took one look at me and my bloodshot eyes and utterly gave me the cold shoulder all the way into 1999. I never could understand her hatred for smoking pot. I mean, I had just turned 23, I had a good job, I loved her, and at the end of the night I didn’t puke up all the Captain Morgan I drank and made her drive me home with a splitting headache like most kids my age. In fact, I could still drive us home while I was stoned because at the very least I’d be cruising under the 35 mile an hour speed limit on Main street.

In the spring of 1999, things started to come undone. I had moved into a two bedroom apartment in Maple Shade with a guy I worked with at Friday’s, and literally two weeks after I signed the lease, I got fired from my cushy $450 a week serving job, which in today’s world is the equivalent to being paid $715 a week. I know it wasn’t a lot of money, but my rent was cheap, and having “no income” a week doesn’t pay the bills. It was at this time that I started working with Melissa’s mom in that shitty textile plant which only lasted a month or so. I did some odd jobs here and there and eventually found myself working as a server at Carrabba’s Italian Grill a few miles down the road from my place. Crisis was kind of adverted, but a new challenging situation would then arise.

One night in June of 1999, the time finally came when Melissa had decided she would say goodbye to her V-Card. Now, I had talked with her about this for awhile, and even though she told me it’s what she wanted to do, I still felt that on some level she was doing it more to keep me around than because she actually wanted to do it. Regardless, her Mom was out of town, I came over to her apartment where Melissa had candles and incense burning and we started to do the deed. This is where things got weird…..

Not a minute into it her eyes grew large and she stared at me with a shocked and upsetting look on her face like a deer in headlights. Now, I know the first time is painful, but the next thing that happened totally threw me for a loop. She suddenly started crying in the middle of it. Like hysterically crying. Did I do something wrong? Was she in a lot of pain? I know it’s very possible that it hurts, but my dick isn’t THAT big, is it? I didn’t know what to do. I felt helpless and I felt strange and I didn’t know how to react to this situation and it started to make me angry.

I wasn’t angry at her or anything like that, I just was angry at the situation because I wanted it to be perfect and now I felt helpless and confused. I felt like all of a sudden all of her past issues were coming to a head and being spewed out all over the bed on a night that was supposed to be a sexy and romantic moment in our relationship. I hated my life at that moment. I hated the fact that this was happening, I hated myself for pressuring her, and I hated the fact that this was not going the way I had planned and I didn’t know why. I don’t even think she knew why, or if she did, she never was going to tell me the truth. This was a bad idea, and after about fifteen minutes, she calmed down we put our clothes back on and we just sat there with almost nothing to say to each other.

Melissa and I didn’t attempt to have sex again for awhile, but she did attempt to smoke pot with me one night at my apartment, probably in a effort to see what it was all about and unfortunately that led to fifteen minutes of hysterical laughter interspersed with fifteen minutes of hysterical crying. This went on for what seemed like two hours.

“Are you ok?” I asked her as she blankly stared at my wall without saying a word.

She never answered, and she didn’t speak for a hundred and twenty minutes while I tried to get her to sober up by feeding her cheese and crackers with a side of diet coke. The reaction she had was so weird. I felt like I had a sick puppy on my hands and I was afraid to leave her for a minute and I just didn’t understand what the hell was going on. Needless to say, a few days later we broke up. I don’t know if it had to do with the last few weeks of experimental sex and drug use, or if it had to do with the fact that perhaps our thing had run it’s course. Just to be clear, I didn’t want to break up with her, but it’s something she felt she needed to do and she cut off communication with me for the next few weeks. That’s the one thing I did not appreciate about the way it ended. I had no idea how to fix this.

Look, I knew I wasn’t the best boyfriend in the world the last few months, and I’m sure the stress of me losing my job maybe put a strain on our relationship and perhaps there was some stigma that she couldn’t ignore when it came to the failed attempts at sex and weed smoking. Maybe she was pissed that when she went to college earlier that spring and had her own apartment in Philly I didn’t come by as much as I should have come by. Maybe she was pissed that instead of hanging out with her I was hanging out with my friends from work playing poker and getting stoned til 3am? Maybe she just had the foresight to see that this thing wasn’t going to get any better. I was really upset about it for awhile and I used to hang with my best friend, telling him how depressed I was and how I was lucky to have him there for me while I whined and complained about how much I missed Melissa…..or so I thought.

One night in early October of 1999 I drove over to my best friend’s house to watch a movie. As I pulled up, I took a look at the cars that were parked outside as that was the way to find out who was all over there. I didn’t see many, but the one car I saw that didn’t normally belong there belonged to Melissa.

Wait…. what the fuck was she doing hanging out at my best friend’s house watching a movie? It was as if I didn’t even need to go inside to get that answer, but I guess I felt like seeing it for myself because I went inside anyway. I walked in the back door into the downstairs den of my best friend’s parents house where I had spent the last six or seven years hanging out eating food, horsing around, and watching the Phillies, Flyers and Eagles. I looked on the couch and saw him sitting there, a few feet away from Melissa. I said hello, and he said hello back, but neither one of them made eye contact with me, and that’s when I knew exactly what was going on.

Wow. Karma is a bitch, and apparently I had been dating karma for the last year and a half. I only stayed a few minutes because the tension in that room was unbearable for me. I left that night knowing that my ex girlfriend and my best friend were about to start dating each other and there was nothing I could do about it. Now it was all out in the open and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t devastate me, but to be honest, it didn’t surprise me at all. I guess that’s what you get when you hook up with a girl three years earlier in the backseat of a car driven by her current boyfriend. In a way, life had come full circle and I was reaping what I sowed. I didn’t like it, but in hindsight I got what I deserved.

I dyed my hair black the next day and I took a shitty job at a restaurant called Prospector’s on 38 in Mt. Laurel and I tried to busy myself with work, and get the situation off my mind but it wasn’t helping me. Then one night in November of 1999, after I had spent the last few weeks crying myself to sleep writing sad bastard entries in my journal and wondering why it all happened, I got a call from my friend who told me he had something he wanted to show me, and for me to come over after work. When I got to his cousins house he handed me a white pill with a little Tweety bird on it.

“Here, take this. You’ll thank me for it later.” He said.

That was the first hit of ecstasy I ever did, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. There was something about doing X that night that changed my life forever. I let go of the anger and resentment I had towards my best friend and Melissa, and I started to envision a world where I wouldn’t let it bother me anymore. For the next few months my friends and I got caught up in the club scene and believe me, we did MORE than our share of tweety birds, mitsubishis, rolex, and double stacked ferraris during that time. I didn’t think about Melissa anymore and all I could do was create a place in my mind where I was able to live my life without her and my best friend in it.

Looking back now, that place in time had been filled with drugs, parties and late night trips to Atlantic City at 3 in the morning, but it still left me feeling empty. When I got arrested outside of Studio 6 in A.C. on April 1st 2000, everything in my life changed. I hadn’t talked to Melissa in awhile but she came over to see me the next day and her and her Mom and I went out to Applebee’s for dinner. I was cracked the fuck out. I probably looked like one of those kids you see on the MDMA episode of Drugs Inc., deshelved from spending the night in jail with his pupils dilated and a cold sweat dripping down my face. I was in a bad place, and even though this was the first time I had seen her in awhile, I knew that Melissa wasn’t going to save me. I had to do things on my own.

A few months later I sold my car and all of my belongings and I moved 3000 miles away to Seattle Washington, a city I had NEVER been to before, and I started a new life there where no one knew me. I could be anyone I wanted to be. I was so far enough away from New Jersey that I didn’t feel the pain every time I drove past a place that reminded me of her. I didn’t have the possessions that used to trigger a memory that no longer served me for good, and I made new friends and told them to call me Christian so at least in my mind I could think of myself as a healed soul living in the Pacific Northwest.

I lived there for two years, and it was probably one of the most amazing experiences of my life. I’ll probably write a blog about that later. As for Melissa, we kept in contact for a bit and when I moved back to the east coast in 2002 I lived with her and her roommate in Philly for a few months, but it never went back to the way it was. We were just two different people. She was experimenting with pot and ecstasy at the time (how ironic) and I was trying to figure out what the hell I was going to do with my life. I eventually wound up here in L.A. and it was about a year later when Melissa and her roommate moved out to Hollywood as well. Why? I’ll never know.

You might be wondering if we ever got back together…but that never happened. She had a new agenda and that ended up being dating one of my friends I met out here, naturally. I can’t say I was surprised. I guess that just ended up being her thing in life….dating friends of the boyfriends she used date. She was a really good artist too, but that’s not how I remember her. I really wish it was.

I don’t talk to Melissa anymore. I think it’s been almost 7 years since the last time we spoke and to be honest, I wouldn’t even know what to say to her if I did see her. I hear she had an arts and crafts store in Haddonfield that closed down, and she is getting married to a guy I used to be in a band with back in the late 1990s. As for my best friend who she dated for years? We’re still good friends. I made up with him a couple years later and to be honest I don’t hold any ill will towards him at all. We joke about both dating her now and we even have a bet every year at the Super Bowl coin toss and the loser of the bet has to accept the fact that Melissa is their proverbial “girl” for the next year. Trust me, it’s not an honor. I was just at his wedding last year when he married the love of his life and we still text each other almost every day. I guess there is some truth to the phrase “Bros before Hos”

The time when I lost my ex girlfriend and my best friend within a month of each other really did suck, and it hurt….but instead of letting it define me in a negative way and making it the reason I hate women and don’t trust people ever again, I used it to be the catalyst to make a huge change in my life that may have had to happen to me to force me to get to where I’m at today. I’m extremely happy with what the future might bring in the next few months, even though I still haven’t figured out the relationship aspect of my life. I know it will come in time. Melissa really did affect me in a way that I will always remember and hold true to myself. I still check my horoscope every morning when I have my coffee, I still appreciate fine works of art and the sounds of indie rock when the moment strikes me, and the day after she broke up with me I started writing in a journal and I haven’t stopped writing for the last fifteen years. I just think to myself sometimes that maybe I needed to get my heart broken so that I could heal my mind. Everything happens for a reason, right? At least that’s the way I choose to look at it.

I met the flight attendant at Birds in Hollywood. I was there to have a few happy hour drinks with my friend, and I had been taken off the schedule from work that night, due to a totally unrelated issue with a liquor license at the club.

Birds is a local neighborhood bar on Franklin in Hollywood. I’ve been drunk, embarrassed myself, been kicked out of, sobered up, done blow in the bathroom, and felt right at home at this local watering hole. It’s my go to bar for when I feel like I want to be home drinking, but not at home. I’ve had a couple first or second dates there, but this night in particular was not a planned date. I got there early and took the last two seats at the back bar.

As soon as I got there, I noticed her. She had on white pants, a baby blue tank top, and these amazing eyes that caught my gaze immediately. I ordered a Stella from the bartender, sat down three seats away from her and stared….at my new smart phone while I waited for my friend to join me. About five minutes later, John arrived and we ordered another round of drinks and some food. It was great to catch up with John as I hadn’t seen the kid for three months, but in between conversations about work and what we’ve been up to, I kept looking over at this girl, and she kept looking over at me. At one point, I left to go to the bathroom and when I came back I saw John engaged in a conversation with her and her friend. Things progressed from there without a lot of effort, and I eventually bought her and her friend a round of shots, sat down next to her and got to know her name, her job, and the instantaneous attraction we had that neither of us could ignore.

What immediately freaked me out about her was this sudden sense of familiarity, followed by how she kind of looked like two of my ex girlfriends, peppered with a dash of Christen Press from the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team. I know I have a type, and Robyn had shoulder length dark hair, big features, hazel eyes, a great body, and her birthday was 18 days after mine. Capricorn on Capricorn could be good. Could also be disastrous, but I was willing to find out.

She loved dinosaurs, told me about her T-Rex tattoo that she couldn’t show me in public, and I told her how I wanted to take her to see Jurassic World and how I would even wear a button down shirt. Classy huh? Guess it worked because she agreed to our first date, and then right before John left for the night, I kissed her in the middle of the bar. Look, I normally hate public displays of affection, unless of course I’m involved in the PDA. Is it a double standard? Yeah, maybe it is, so feel free to call me a hypocrite because at this point in the night, I didn’t care and it was time for us, minus John to go to another bar.

At the end of the block lies the French wine bar La Poubelle. This is another cool hip hot spot in small town Hollywood. The two flight attendants and I walk in, and again I grab the last two seats at the bar. I order three glasses of wine from the bartender who I recently saw in that Jack In The Box “Sriracha” commercial. We chat for a bit more, then I excuse myself to the bathroom where I proceed to look at myself in the mirror and tell myself to play it cool, just like Travolta in Pulp Fiction.

Except when I returned from the bathroom, there were two guys talking to the flight attendants. One of them I recognized from TV. His name was Frank something, and he’s the token Indian guy in every sitcom or procedural drama on television that didn’t cast Kal Penn. His friend is some goofy Asian kid who was wearing sandals and probably just feeds off of Indian Frank’s leftovers, if there are any. After about thirty seconds of wanting to get rid of them without any luck, I pull out the big guns.

“I know you. You’re that dude on TV, right? You were on Entourage! Agent Raj!” I say in a sarcastic “now it’s time to leave” tone.

“Yeah man, I’m Frank.” He replies

“Hey Frank, I’m Christian. How do you know my girlfriend?” I say as I put my arm around the flight attendant who I had met literally four hours ago.

And that’s really all it took. Frank and his Asian flip-flop friend disappeared into the night and the flight attendants and I finished our drinks and I walked them home. One of the girls lived right across the street from the bar, and it wasn’t the one that I was interested in. However, when we reached her apartment building, she turned to me and said…

“Can you take care of her?”

“Yeah, she’s in good hands.” I replied.

And with that, I got into Robyn’s car, and we headed back to my apartment a few blocks down the road. She parked her two door Honda coupe with tinted windows in front of my two door Honda coupe with tinted windows and we went upstairs. I turned on some EDM which she made fun of me for, we played some darts, and we made out for the rest of the night while she tried unsuccessfully to befriend my cat. My cat is kind of a bitch and she makes you work for her affection. It doesn’t come easy, but Robyn was willing to try for a bit.

“I have to be up at 4am for work” She tells me at midnight.

“We should probably go to sleep then.” I replied.

It has never been easier to get a hot 27 year old flight attendant into my bed before that night. However, I had never really met a hot late twenties flight attendant at a bar before that night either. I know what you’re thinking….but the thing is, we didn’t have sex and I didn’t even try to. Don’t get me wrong, she was beautiful, and I was VERY attracted to her and I wanted to sex her up, but there was something about her that made me so fucking comfortable that all we did that night was cuddle. I know, what a fucking loser right? Well, fuck you! I don’t cuddle AT ALL! I NEVER do it. In fact, the last time I cuddled someone was 2008, and the last time I had gotten laid was 2014 so you can OBVIOUSLY tell that I take one much more seriously than the other. It was one of those moments where I knew what I was happening was unnatural because I had just met her, but it just felt instinctive.

“This is weird, huh?” I asked her.

“Yeah, this is kind of weird, but I’m ok with it.” She replied.

With me laying on my back, and Robyn laying on my chest, we dozed off into the night. At 4am, the jarring alarm went off on my brand new smartphone I had gotten the day before. I didn’t know how to adjust the tune it plays, so we awoke to some strange and random female voice singing “Good Moooorning.” It was still dark out, but Robyn had to leave for work, so she took off my Flyers pants that she was reluctant to wear the night before because she is a Lightning fan, put her clothes back on and I walked her down to the parking garage and sent her on her way.

I immediately liked her, even though there were a few things about her that I chose to ignore. She was vegetarian, and I have NEVER dated a vegetarian before, but we had just met and I wasn’t really thinking about long term things, so I didn’t care. Now if she were vegan, THAT would be a deal breaker. Over the next couple days we texted each other and made plans to go see Jurassic World on Saturday for which I bought tickets ahead of time, in her neighborhood, on a Saturday night. She was really excited to see this movie, and I was really excited to see her, and a little bit excited for the movie. When she asked if I wanted to come over her place for a drink before the flick, I absolutely said yes.

She lived close to Venice, but far enough away that I didn’t see any pot shops or homeless people on my way to her place. I was wearing a pair of T-Rex socks I had bought a couple years ago. They’re blue, and have an orange Tyrannosaurs on them which matched the Tyrannosaurus tattoo she had on her upper left thigh which she showed me the night I met her when we weren’t in public. Truth is, it was an awful tattoo, but then again I can’t say anything because I have an awful tattoo of a cat getting electrocuted on my left leg. Come to think of it, we had that in common too.

I arrived at her place and she came out to meet me. She looked hot. Like cheerleader hot. She was wearing a black skirt, a fitted grey top, and white Keds on her feet. Literally, like what teenagers wear, but she pulled it off because

A. She had a good fashion sense and style, and

B. It made her just short enough that I looked kind of tall walking next to her.

Of course she tells me she deliberately made that choice so she didn’t tower over me, but in reality I’m 5’10 and she’s 5’7, and I totally appreciated her sarcastic sense of humor. She asked me what I wanted a drink, so I asked her what she had and she opened a cabinet in the kitchen and revealed to me exactly what I thought the liquor cabinet of a flight attendant would look like. It was filled with tiny airplane bottles of booze that she had probably stolen from work.

“I’ll have vodka….no…. whiskey” I said.

I don’t know why I said that because up until that evening, I didn’t drink whiskey, at all. Occasionally I’ll have a shot of Jameson but I feel like a new experience with someone is the perfect opportunity to start drinking something I hadn’t before? Maybe.

We chatted for a bit, watched her weird neighbor do push-ups on the lawn in front of her place and then caught an Uber to the movie theater. We sat through a pretty awful movie that night. I know some people really liked Jurassic World, but we both kind of felt a little disappointed. Like, how the hell is that chick running in high heels throughout the whole movie, and why did they have to show so many Brontosaurus deaths, and don’t you think the Velociraptor trainer should know that the huge dinosaur they created in a lab that is terrorizing the park was mixed with Velociraptor DNA???

Luckily, that would be the only disappointment in the night. After the movie, we took another Uber to a bar on Venice Blvd. called Bigfoot West. Our driver had mentioned there was a warehouse party down the street, and creepily almost dropped us off in some alley until we both stated we did NOT want to go to some shady warehouse party. He kept making uncomfortable statements which made us more eager to get out of the car and into the bar where I got us two shots of Bulleit Rye, her favorite, and two Bulleit and gingers because after that piece of shit movie, we both needed a stiff drink or two.

We talked, watched people at the bar and after our first drink, started getting a little more comfortable with each other in the booth. I noticed how after a drink, Robyn became a lot more sociable and let her guard down. It seemed like she was really into me. I mean, I thought she was anyway, and I noticed a difference in the way she presented herself to me after a shot of whiskey.

An ex of mine told me that when a woman points her knees towards you while she sits, she’s into you. If she’s NOT into you, her knees will point away. Well, Robyn’s body language was telling me everything I needed to know about how she felt. They were pointed in my direction, therefore…into me. We started talking about our past relationships, and I could tell after a few questions I asked, she didn’t seem to want to talk about it anymore.

“I don’t like talking about me, let’s talk about you.” She said.

Now look, I’m no psychologist, but I could tell right then and there that there was something in her past that she didn’t want to divulge to me, which was totally fine. We had really just met. I will tell you anything when we just met so I went on to tell her how I had gotten arrested in April of 2000, and how a few months ago I had to go back to Jersey for a court case that I thought was taken care of until I tried to renew my passport and it got denied. I told her stories about my drug days when I sold ecstasy in Philly for a week, and sold pot in Vegas to make my rent one month. Even though I was coming off as a bad-ass, I assured her that I wasn’t into that lifestyle anymore. I mean, that was like 15 years ago and I had gotten past that time in my life, but it still makes for good conversation.

She told me how she hates Vegas but has to fly there a lot for work, and how she doesn’t really like Los Angeles but just like me has a love/hate relationship with it. We had a lot in common. We were both born under the same star sign, the same Chinese zodiac sign, we looked really good together and we both drove almost the exact same kind of car. As I kissed her in the booth that night and we made a spectacle of ourselves in front of a bar packed with hipsters I felt like this was really starting out well.

“Wanna get out of here?” She asked.

“Yeah. Let’s do that.” I replied

We stood outside and she told me she had a great ass, so I had to see for myself. She was right. She had a great everything. I gotta say, I would have been sick to my stomach watching her and I with our arms around each other making out on the sidewalk of the bar that night with my hand occasionally checking in on her butt while we were waiting for our third Uber of the night, but luckily, I wasn’t an onlooker.

When we got back to her apartment, she led me into her bedroom, I took everything out of my pockets and got into bed with her where we continued to be that annoying couple who can’t take their hands off each other, but the thing is, I really COULDN’T keep my hands off of her. There was this innate sexual attraction between us that instantly needed no introduction. We were on auto-pilot and there wasn’t anything weird about it for me at all, until a few minutes later when I could tell what was about to happen, was going to happen.

“Umm, I didn’t bring a…”

Now, truth is, I did have one, but how presumptuous of me would it be to admit that I brought it? Would she think less of me? Would it be something like “Oh this scumbag thought I was easy and figured he was going to get laid tonight?” By the way, I don’t like the word condom so I was having difficulty even writing this part of the blog, but in reality, the dome was in my car and I wasn’t about to break the mood and get up out of bed to go get it. Without another word, she reached over and took one out of the drawer and handed it to me. How presumptuous of her! (kidding) Even though I was nervous and kind of excited and in total disbelief that this was happening, it happened. I didn’t expect any of this three days earlier when I met this girl at a bar in Hollywood and then spent the next 11 hours with her NOT having sex but tonight, things were a little different. A full ten to fifteen minutes later, it was time to go to sleep.

“You should probably throw that out.” She said.

“I think I’m gonna frame it.” I replied as we both laughed.

But of course, I didn’t. What kind of weirdo freak would even consider something like that? I got out of bed, threw it away, and then I fell asleep with my arms around her. I think I woke up at 4 in the morning, it was still dark out, but I couldn’t really tell what time it was. I laid there for a few minutes and I looked at Robyn as she slept next to me. She was stunning even when she was asleep. Then, she rolled over onto her back, and she started to…snuffle a bit. I remember thinking to myself “Please don’t snore, please don’t snore.” There is nothing less attractive than a hot girl that saws wood when she sleeps.

But then, it stopped, and I breathed a snuffle of relief. I couldn’t get over how crazy this was. For one thing I had just met her, but everything about her seemed so familiar. Even though I hadn’t slept with anyone in 6 months, and even though I hadn’t slept over a girl’s place in 4 years, none of it really seemed to be awkward. I’m very cautious when it comes to dating someone I really like, and I know I have a tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve, which is quite obvious by the name of this blog. Normally, it takes me years to find someone I care to see more than twice, and rarely do I find someone who I knowingly allow to deliberately pull me out of my comfort zone. I don’t stay over girl’s houses, I don’t refrain from cigarettes if she doesn’t smoke, (yeah yeah yeah, I’m quitting soon) and I don’t sleep with someone on the first date, unless of course that’s what naturally happens. I did all of those things that night, and even though I know right from the beginning if I’m into someone or not, it still made me feel a little uncomfortable to admit it to myself. However, the way I look at it, I’d rather feel something than nothing at all.

I dozed off for another hour or so, and right around dusk I woke up, and I started getting my things together. I couldn’t find my underwear. I’m sure it was somewhere in the bed, but I wasn’t going to make her get up for a pair of Calvin Klein’s that are easily replaceable. I grabbed my phone, wallet, keys and clothes, kissed her on the lips and told her I’d talk to her later that day. I quietly left her apartment, walked out to my car commando style, and played “The Heart That I’m Hearing” by Galantis.

It’s funny how music comes into your life at a time when it perfectly describes the situation you are in, almost like it was meant to find you. Ever feel like that? Well, that happens to me a lot, and that’s how I felt that morning. I had just downloaded it the day before I met her, and when I listened to the lyrics that morning, I heard that track in a whole new way.

“I’m gonna let my heart decide if this is real. A thousand pictures can’t describe how I feel. It’s like the world doesn’t exist, but I can still see it. And when I focus on your eyes, it’s your heart that I’m hearing.”

I got back to my apartment around 6:30am, fed the cat and put on the third season of Orange Is The New Black. I wasn’t tired, and even if I was, I don’t think I could sleep. About an hour later I get a text message from Robyn.

When I woke up and you weren’t here this morning, it made me kind of sad.

sent 7:17 am

That is kind of a great text to receive. I don’t know if she really meant that, or if she was still drunk, but regardless I appreciated it. Come to think of it, we only had two drinks the night before, so no way she was still inebriated. I liked her. I knew that, and I was pretty sure she liked me. At that point things were at an all time high with the flight attendant and we were crusing at 30,000 feet. But as I would come to find out, it wasn’t all clear skies. We were in for a little turbulence in the week ahead….